The most sinister aspect of California Governor Pete Wilson's Proposition 165, which would slash payments to those defined as tax consumers rather than tax producers, is that it judges people according to their economic utility. If it is passed, quadriplegic Mark O'Brien would be judged worthless, condemned (like the majority of disabled Americans) to the dead-end solution of TV watching in a nursing home. O'Brien is a writer whose book of poetry, "Breathing," was published by LittleDog Press (Austin) in 1990.

I lie alone in my room. I cannot move my arms and legs. Most of the time I breathe through an iron lung. I write these words by manipulating a stick with my teeth against a computer's keyboard. Now I hear Pete Wilson has concluded that I am useless.

Wilson is the Governor of California, my home state, and has had much to say lately about how I live. As a disabled person, I depend upon California's In Home Support Services program (IHSS) to pay the attendants who take care of me. Blaming California's problems on the increasing number of what he calls "tax consumers" and the slower increase in the number of "tax producers," Governor Wilson recently won a 12 percent reduction in IHSS in a budget battle with the legislature. His long-term solution is Proposition 165, an initiative to cut California's Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the counties' General Assistance programs (GA) and IHSS. It will also grant the governor power to cut these programs even further without legislative approval.

If Proposition 165 succeeds then the governor will be seen as a shrewd politician whose argument that people like me are useless will be legitimated as good politics.

America has, since its founding, been moving away from social, slavery and class divisions, and has been seeking equality among all people. Now Governor Wilson wants to throw American history into reverse with his new tax-payer tax-consumer dichotomy.

What I would tell Governor Wilson is that I did not become disabled to collect money from the state. The recipients of AFDC and GA did not volunteer for their misery. Welfare Cadillac mythology does not apply to real life because anyone can become poor or disabled through no fault of their own.

Governor Wilson's tax-payer tax-consumer split postulates an elite that does not have to be bothered by conscience or social responsibility. And like 18th century slave holders, it judges people according to their economic utility. That is its most sinister aspect.

For if we say that a person's worth is to be set solely by their economic usefulness, then I must live condemned as a worthless person. Whatever value I may have -- as a writer if not as a human being -- is of no consequence. When all rights are subjected to cost-benefit analysis, even my right to live outside an institution is threatened. For only when confined (like most disabled Americans) to the nursing home's dead-end solution of TV watching will I at least have value for the nursing home industry.

Living on my own, on the other hand, I have tried to be an economic success. I attended the University of California at Berkeley by driving a gurney type wheelchair that would have scared Evil Knievel. I graduated with a 3.4 GPA. While I was a student, I decided that writing was the career choice that suited me best because of my physical limitations and my emotional makeup. Today I work hard at my writing. As I write this I am suffering an infection of my urinary tract that weakens me so much I must sleep all afternoon.

Governor Wilson's tax-consumer tax-producer division does not take my effort into account. Nor does it admit the possibility that I might write something in the future that has economic or cultural value. Instead, it freezes me into a caste system as rigid as any that ever existed. By judging me worthless it only heaps a gratuitous insult on top of a permanent disability.

There is, of course, a broader principle at stake than just my fate. In discarding the notion that we are all members of a single American community, Governor Wilson repudiates an ideal that for almost two centuries has been a guiding light to the world -- that of moving from an exclusionary to an inclusionary society. If we are going to move backward toward a divided society, there will be only two classes, the winners and the losers, set against each other in fury and terror.